The important and related constructs of attention and executive function (EF) are each themselves comprised of multiple skills and operations, and are subject to influence by multiple sources of constraint. We will examine the control of cognition by contrasting the potency of environmental constraints, experiential constraints, and executive constraints across species and across child development. Previous research suggests reliable performance differences between monkeys and human adults in the effects of variables that result in exogenous or endogenous shifts in attention. It seems reasonable to suggest that the pattern of performance for the monkeys may also be typical of other individuals for whom attention-and specifically the executive, motivated, purposive control of attention-is immature or otherwise deficit. These findings underscore the need to extend the research to preschool children and to chimpanzees with and without language training. This research is further designed to elucidate comparatively the nature and number of factors that comprise attention and EF and to identify the relation between these factors and other aspects of cognition like learning, memory, and language. Additionally, the use of noninvasive imaging techniques and biochemical assays are proposed to elucidate the brain-behavior relations that underlie attention and related constructs, and particularly those that correspond to variations in the control of attention. We will also investigate training and other interventions that might result in improved capacity for executive attention by monkeys, chimpanzees, children, and adults. Together, these results will contribute to a unified perspective on attention and EF that integrates data across species and across the lifespan. We anticipate that the findings will have implications for the assessment and remediation of individual and group differences in attention and EF, including those differences that contribute to attention-deficit or dysexecutive-syndrome diagnoses.